18 Jan 2019: "The Panic Bird" by Robert Phillips

just flew inside my chest. Some
days it lights inside my brain,
but today it's in my bonehouse,
rattling ribs like a birdcage.

If I saw it coming, I'd fend it
off with machete or baseball bat.
Or grab its scrawny hackled neck,
wring it like a wet dishrag.

But it approaches from behind.
Too late I sense it at my back --
carrion, garbage, excrement.
Once inside me it preens, roosts,

vulture on a public utility pole.
Next it flaps, it cries, it glares,
it rages, it struts, it thrusts
its clacking beak into my liver,

my guts, my heart, rips off strips.
I fill with black blood, black bile.
This may last minutes or days.
Then it lifts sickle-shaped wings,

rises, is gone, leaving a residue --
foul breath, droppings, molted midnight
feathers. And life continues.
And then I'm prey to panic again.

3 comments:

  1. This poem feels so connected to yesterday’s poem, but with the opposite in mind. Those very things in life that are the Truth upon which we build, or upon which we crumble. It comes into our “bonehouse” and “roosts”. And then it lifts...I feel like there is a whole other poem available between the last 6th and 5th line. What happens to us between the clenching and the flight?? Life happens, really...it makes me want to know more.

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    Replies
    1. It lasts "minutes or days."

      I had a panic attack once. I was flying in a cargo plane. It was a short hour flight.

      I had this aghast. It was load and tight, but nothing too crazy. I had been louder and tighter places plenty of times before.

      We had to wear harnesses and hold our bags on our laps. Once we were in the air, I was a pendulum rocking between being a tiny person in a large space and being a large person in a small place. I sat normally, but in my head I was screaming and so uncomfortable, physically and mentally. This went on. My friend was next to me and I said, "Dude, I'm freaking out." He responded with something like yeah this sucks. I talked to my friend again when I thought we were close. I said I was glad we were almost there, but he replied it'd only been like 5 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I would have jumped out. I didn't want to die. I just wanted out.

      That was the most uncomfortable I've ever been. I couldn't imagine dealing with panic attacks regularly without drugs or a meditative drill. I feel like I could calm my mind if I was back in that situation, but I know I could just be overconfident.

      Long comment, nothing to do with the poem, haha.

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  2. Read this one out loud. I read the panic parts faster, and slowed down when it subsided.

    The poem read awkwardly the first time. As I reread and connected with the narrator, I could feel some of his/her anxiety and panic as I read.

    The ending is so depressing. Prey are hunted and killed for food, that adds another layer to the narrator's experience. Most prey die once, this narrator dies over and over again.

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